Buffering State-making
Geopolitics in the Sudd Marshlands of South Sudan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3132216 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peer Schouten (0000-0001-7453-6463, Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark), Jan Bachmann (0000-0001-9276-0442, University of Gothenburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1027-1045 |
| Publication date | 2024-05-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2020.1858283 |
| OpenAlex | W3116598790 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 47 |
This paper explores the history and ongoing transformation of the South Sudanese Sudd marshlands as a buffer zone in a variety of subsequent projects of domination and their subversion. Its argument will be that the contemporary geopolitics of the Sudd cannot be understood properly without unwinding the historical layers of contestation and conflict around these projects of control and their reversal, projects which have sought to shape and have been shaped crucially by the area’s specific ecology. For more than a century, different external ventures – colonial, nationalist, secessionist – encountered in the southern Sudanese marshlands a formidable buffer to the realization of their various projects of control. Ambitions of making the Nile water flow, establishing effective state authority, or building lines of communication, get stuck in the Sudd’s difficult terrain. Building on the political ecology and wider social theory on terrain, resistance and warfare, we conceptualize the Sudd as a lively political ecology – one characterized by constant struggles and accommodations between the centripetal logics of state-making and the centrifugal propensities of vernacular political culture
Geopolitics · Political science · Politics · Computer Science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Transboundary Water Resource Management
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Lakes as Rebellious Landscapes
Seeing like a Guerrilla
The longue durée of short-lived infrastructure – Roads and state authority in South Sudan
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State of Rebellion
The War Machines
The Art of Not Being Governed
Nuer Dilemmas
States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control
The Waters of the Nile
The River Nile in the Age of the British
Key figure of mobility
Rule of Experts
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Report upon the Basin of the Upper Nile; with Proposals for the Improvement of That River
The borderlands of South Sudan
Political Ecology in the Upper Nile
Development, Counterinsurgency, and the Destruction of the Iraqi Marshes
Political Ecologies of War and Forests
La garnison-entrepôt
The Upper Nile Province Handbook
Liberation’ or capture
The Jonglei Canal
Terrain as insurgent weapon
The Geographical Pivot of History
Buffer States in World Politics
US Evangelicals and the Politics of Slave Redemption as Religious Freedom in Sudan
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The autonomous power of the state
Nuer Dilemmas
Shadows in the Grass
The Jonglei Canal
Concrete approaches to peace
The Historical Approach to the Study of Societies and their Environment in the Eastern Upper Nile Plains
Society Against the State
The Chadian Tubu
The Territorial State as a Figured World of Power
Contesting the militarization of the places where they met
The Southern Funj of the Sudan as a Frontier Society, 1820-1980
Borders Are Galaxies
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |